News from Gillian Candler

Kia Ora
It is with some sadness that I am writing my last introduction to a Learning Media Contributor Newsletter. I am about to leave Learning Media to embark on a new venture joining the self-employed amongst you as a writer and consultant. So while I’m excited about the new opportunity, I will find it hard to leave such a great place to work and the ongoing contact that I have had with so many of you.

Over the years at Learning Media, I’ve commissioned, accepted scripts, approved illustrations and worked with many of you, when I was an editor.  Since then I have also met many of you at contributor functions, conferences, book signings and other events. The diverse group of writers, illustrators, photographers, teacher/writers, performers, translators, song writers and other contributors are an important part of the wider Learning Media/Te Pou Taki Korero family, I’ll miss you all.

This has been busy year at Learning Media. We’re making some big changes in the face of a difficult climate with export sales. We’re making some changes to the type of business we go after and to our company structure as a result. Some of you who have written or illustrated products for us to sell in the US market will have noticed that royalties may not be meeting your expectations. Unfortunately, like other organisations that export to the US, we’ve been affected by the downturn in the US economy.

We’re continuing to find ways to market our products around the world and look forward to an increased return to those of you on royalties.

In a shift in direction, we’ve been seeking out contract publishing opportunities and we’re pleased to say despite the downturn, we’ve won a major contract with a US publisher, which is a big vote of confidence in Learning Media and our contributors.

Our New Zealand materials for schools continue to reflect the Depth, Diversity and Design that Learning Media Te Pou Taki Korero is known for. It’s what teachers love about our resources – depth of pedagogical thinking, diverse topics, and design that works for learners. And it’s what engages students in learning, which is what it’s all about.

Ko te Tamaiti te Putake o te Kaupapa  - The Child is the Heart of the Matter

All the best
Gillian Candler

PS.The Communications team will introduce the new Chief Executive in the next newsletter

A lot to sing about!

Author Gregory O'Brien and Learning Media were delighted with the success of A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 years of the New Zealand School Journal, winning the Reference and Anthology category of the Montana New Zealand Books Awards 2008. The judges said that we were to be congratulated on the 'the quality of this lovely book......the author and designers have been extraordinarily skillfull in pursuing not only the Journal's coverage of the general themes of our country's development, but also many of the more subtle and oblique aspects of our national character'.   

The book’s title comes from a description of the School Journal office as “a nest of singing birds” given by a friend to poet and Journal editor (1955-72) Alistair Campbell. It reflects the extraordinary array of New Zealand writers and artists who worked for the Journal during the 50's and 60's. The 'birds' in Learning Media’s current 'nest' - its contributors - continue to sing brightly and loudly, featuring prominently in recent book awards.  We congratulate:

LIANZA 2008 Book Awards winners and finalists:

• Mandy Hager, winner of the Esther Glen Award for Non-Fiction for  Smashed
• Gavin Bishop, winner of the Russell Clark award for Illustration for Rats and also finalists, Melanie Drewery for Dad’s Takeaways and Tahi, One Lucky Kiwi,
  Ali Teo for Tahi, One Lucky Kiwi and Andrew Burdan for Te Po Roa
• Finalists for the Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction, Feana Tu‘akoi for What is a Fish? and Sandra Carrod for Weather Watch New Zealand
  

2008 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards winners and finalists

• Melanie Drewery and Ali Teo, winners of the Picture Book category for Tahi, One Lucky Kiwi and finalist Gavin Bishop for Rats
• Andrew Crowe, winner of the Non-Fiction category for Which New Zealand Spider? and his other finalist book, A Mini Guide to the Identification of New Zealand Land Birds  and finalists, Sandra Carrod for Weather Watch New Zealand and Feana Tu‘akoi for What is a Fish?
• Joy Cowley and Gavin Bishop, winners of the Junior Fiction category for Snake and Lizard and finalists Phyllis Johnston for Dead Man’s Dee and Bill Nagelkerke for My Story: Sitting on the Fence
• Fleur Beale for The Transformation of Minna Hargreaves and Brigid Lowry for Tomorrow All Will Be Beautiful, finalists in the Young Adult Fiction category.

Congratulations also to Sue Wootton, one of the six writers featured in the 2008 edition of The Six Pack and  Jessica Le Bas, winner of the Jessie McKay Award for Best First Book of Poetry for Incognito.  See below for profiles on award winners and finalists, Melanie Drewery and Andrew Burdan.

Elsie Locke Writing Prize

Learning Media and the Elsie Locke Memorial Trust proudly announce the inaugural Elsie Locke Writing Prize for original writing by children in Years 7 and 8. This new annual competition, beginning in 2009, commemorates the life and work of Elsie Locke by encouraging children to think and write about matters that interested and concerned her, including social, political, and environmental issues, New Zealand’s social and political history, peace and disarmament, women’s issues, and writing for and by children.

Elsie Locke (1912–2001) was one of New Zealand’s best-loved children’s authors, whose books include The Runaway Settlers, The End of the Harbour, and A Canoe in the Mist.  She also wrote more than 30 stories for the School Journal, the first ‘The Secret Rescue’ published in 1959  and her last ‘A Present from Pudding’ in 2001, the
year of her death. Click here for more information about the competition.

Changes in Intellectual Property

By Helen Scott, Senior Intellectual Property Advisor

It has been a busy time for the legislators involved in copyright law. Learning Media keeps a watching brief on the legislation, to make sure our policies reflect what’s current.

Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act – save for one parallel importing provision that is already in force and one provision regarding Internet service provider liability, the new Act came into force 31 October 2008.

The Amendment Act makes many changes in areas relating to digital works. It creates a new category of work: “a communication right”. This is a right to communicate your works, particularly useful for online and multimedia works, and applies to works in electronic environments. The Act also allows schools to store copies of works and make them available for use in class situations where a publisher has previously legitimately released the materials on the Internet or in an electronic database (section 44A).

The media focus has been on the new liabilities for Internet service providers (ISPs), which has been widely defined, whereby ISPs need to have a procedure for deleting copyright material if the ISP is put on notice regarding infringing materials.

While it is a relatively large set of amendments, the new Act, however, doesn’t cause wholesale changes for obtaining permission to use material or contractual changes for our contributors. 

Copyright (Artists’ Resale Right) Amendment Act  - chiefly peripheral to the usual illustrative work associated with Learning Media, the resale right provides artists a significant recognition of their ongoing relationship with physical one-off artwork.

The resale right will not apply to the first sale or transfer of a one-off artwork, and does not apply to sales between private individuals. Artists would, on reaching a $500 sale price threshold if their work is resold in a secondary art market such as an auction house, be entitled to a royalty

Also passed, this resale right would apply to visual art sold commercially, and a royalty would be payable to an artist or their estate on the second selling of an original art work in certain circumstances. This relates to the selling of the original works, not the intellectual property licensed.

We are not seeing this law as requiring changes to LML’s processes either.

NEW: Copyright (Commissioning Rule) Amendment Bill - this bill was introduced to the House 23 September 2008.

Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Act 2008 - received its third reading as well just before Parliament rose in late September.
 
The Act addresses an increasingly unclear and mismatched set of expectations regarding payment to authors for books that are available for use in libraries. This Act will replace the Authors’ Fund, which will continue to operate until the Public Lending Right comes into force. The Act clarifies and makes explicit that authors will receive annual payments.

The date in force is not yet set, and the working details in the regulations are yet to be seen. Again there are no expected changes to LML policy or process, but when the scheme starts to operate we will look at the regulations.

Contributor Profile: Andrew Burdan, artist

My first professional work involved storyboarding TV commercials and dramas – these are visual depictions of camera setups, that help the film production team understand the director’s vision. I found the work to be pretty interesting and fun at the time – you got to see behind the scenes of some pretty impressive productions.

My first foray into illustration was actually with Learning Media, doing a School Journal story for Elton Gregory. Elton was very helpful, not least for giving me the job in the first place, but also for offering great encouragement and many helpful suggestions. (Storyboards had taught me a lot about storytelling and meeting deadlines but I found illustration work to be both a lot more demanding and a lot more rewarding too). Thanks Elton!

Since that initial story I've managed to keep reasonably busy working on a number of really interesting projects for Learning Media and other publishers. The great thing about illustration is it really affords you opportunities to keep learning while you are working, I find the research aspect of a job can be as rewarding as producing the actual artwork.  Initially I worked in a mixture of markers and acrylics and coloured pencils , but I didn’t really feel happy with my work until I did the switch to going digital,  and to Photoshop in particular. My set up involves a pretty standard issue PC with a fairly inexpensive A4 scanner. (I often scan my work in sections and assemble it in Photoshop. Yay! ). I use a Wacom tablet (intuos 3) which is a really great tool and work with Photoshop 7, and occasionally a program called Painter by Corel. I love the flexibility Photoshop offers with its many levels of ‘undo’ and the ability to pick up again right where you left off, no matter how many interruptions occur during the day. 

The expense involved in setting up is definitely a detraction, but prices for computer hardware are continually coming down and offering greater performance into the bargain. As for Photoshop, while it's great to have the latest version, I'm still on version 7 myself and I know of professional artists who are still on Photoshop 3. So  it needn't be prohibitive to experiment with, if you think it sounds interesting. As far as tutorials go, there are hundreds on the net, but I have found the Drawn! Blog really helpful and inspirational in equal measures (heaps of cool stuff there; animations, cartoons and all styles of illustration). 

One the discoveries I've made recently are the art instruction books of Andrew Loomis, a commercial illustrator from the 1950s. His books mainly focus on classical concepts of  anatomy, proportion and perspective, but have applications to all artists no matter what their style may be. I'd really recommend trying to hunt any of these down. ("The Human Machine" by George Woodbridge is also really helpful for trying to understand the fundamentals of anatomy and is still in print).

Contributor Profile: Melanie Drewery,writer

Hi, I’m Melanie Drewery and I’m a writer. It’s so great to be able to say that!

I have wanted to be a writer since I was a child. I filled lots of tatty exercise books with lovingly illustrated stories. My family always believed in me and encouraged me. I was lucky to have parents who passed on a love of books and thought that a career in the arts was a perfectly acceptable plan. It didn’t happen over night. It took a lot of perseverance and persistence to get to this point. Sometimes I still don’t believe it’s true.

For years the idea of being a writer was like a yummy apple, just out of reach at the top of the tree. I worked as a librarian, a pre-school teacher, a potter, and more. Every year I sent my new stories away and finally things started to happen. I got some stories accepted, first on radio, then in magazines, and then (my big break through) with Reed Publishers, and it grew from there. Now I am a fairly prolific writer, so I send my work to many publishers, including Learning Media.

My stories are firmly grounded in Aotearoa, because I think it’s important for children to be able to read about their own culture. That’s one of the wonderful things about the School Journals, they are a great vehicle for local stories. I remember the journals with love from my childhood, being allowed one story at a time, and sneaking ahead to peek at the others, performing the plays, and soaking in the poems. They are still a wealth of material, and I often borrow them from my daughter’s school for a catch-up.

Most of my stories are fictional, with a few facts hidden within. I like to trick my readers into learning, whether it’s some new Maori words to add to their vocabulary, or an interesting fact to store in their brains.  It’s a powerful thing being able to put your ideas on paper and send them out into the world to meet people. I remember discovering the magic of being lost in a story, of having to keep going until I reached the end, and of needing to think about it afterwards. That’s what I aim for. Stories that will pick up their young readers, and carry them along, no matter how short or simple they may seem.

When people ask me for tips, I think the main point I make is this: if you want to write for children, write FOR children. Make the child the centre of your story, make the child the hero, make the child the narrator. Please, please, please write from a child’s point of view, try and remember what it felt like to be a child. Children don’t want to read about clever adults with children at the edge of the story. They want to read about other children overcoming their obstacles, doing funny things, getting into trouble (and hopefully out of it) and so on. It’s okay to have adults in your stories, but at some point the children need to take the reins and have the power to find their own solutions.

The other big point is: never give up. Keep writing, keep learning, read lots, and try and try again.

I’m Melanie Drewery and I’m a writer, the little girl in me clutches her tatty exercise book to her chest and does a happy dance every time I say that.

Goodbye and thanks

During the first half of the year, Learning Media farewelled three long-standing members of staff who have made key contributions to its work. They were:

Janice Marriott, Audio Producer. Janice will always be associated with the popular Kiwi Kidsongs, as well as a range of  other audio resources. Janice wanted more time and flexibility to pursue her other interests, including writing her award-winning books and looking after her lovely cottage garden. Janice continues to produce our audio resources under contract. The photo above shows colleagues presenting her play 'Feathers First' from a 2008 Part 2 School Journal at her farewell function.

Penny Newman, Senior Art Editor. Penny worked across a range of publications during her time at Learning Media, but had a particularly strong association with the School Journal. She was the designer of the award-winning Nest of Singing Birds. Penny left to further her career as a freelance illustrator and designer, and has already worked with Learning Media in this capacity.

Lois Thompson, Literacy Specialist. During her more than thirty years with Learning Media and its predecessors, Lois was involved in either an editorial or management role with nearly all its publications, with a particularly strong relationship with the Ready to Read series. She has played an influential role in literacy in New Zealand as a member of the 1998 Literacy Task Force and a key author  of its report which  has guided the government's literacy policy since that date. 

Special book offer for LML contributors

Join us in celebrating our Montana Book Award win! A great Christmas present for yourself or family and friends, at a special contributor price.

Comes with complimentary set of 10 School Journal art postcards (while stocks last) 

• $45.00 Hardback (RRP $59.95)
• $30.00 Paperback (RRP $39.95)
  Plus $5.00 for shipping within New Zealand 

To order, phone 0800 800 565 or email: orders@learningmedia.co.nz

Don't forget to advise when you are ordering that you are a Learning Media contributor.

Introducing new staff: Alex Collins

Editor, School Journal
I have been with Learning Media 19 months and work mainly on student materials and teachers’ support materials.  This year’s projects have included the Journal of Secondary Students’ Writing, the year 5–6 CD-ROM, and the School Journal Parts 3 and 4.  Prior to starting with Learning Media, I was involved in professional theatre as a stage manager, worked in the film industry for 13 years, and lastly worked as a primary teacher.

Reconnecting with my enjoyment of children’s literature while teaching was the impetus for wanting to work at Learning Media.  I really enjoy my role here and love editing the student materials.  It has been a big challenge, equally as challenging as dealing with an alcoholic actor’s ego or 32 eight year olds on a school trip.

Introducing new staff: Stormy Mohi

Ētita Māori

Tēnā koutou katoa.  I started with Learning Media Limited (Te Pou Taki Kōrero Whāiti) in August last year as Ētita Māori in the Te Wāhanga Māori and Pacifica Publishing team.  Part of my role is to provide guidance and support regarding Māori language text, style editorial and quality language control.

My academic background is in Oceanic Linguistics/ Māori Studies with a particular focus on linguistic, political and qualitative issues surrounding the Māori language.  I am enjoying my role, gaining experiences and insight to Māori language development through the different trends and contexts of sector publishing. One of the main things I enjoy about my job is that I am able to contribute to the development of Māori teachers and students by assisting in providing materials and evidence which support better teacher practice and student learning in Māori medium education. It is an amazing experience.

I look forward to working with you all. "Ko tōku reo, ko tōku mana"

Introducing new staff: Waitangi Teepa

Ētita Māori
E aku nui, e aku rahi, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou katoa.

Ko Maungapōhatu te maunga.
Ko Ōhinemataroa te awa.
Ko Te Whānau Pani, ko Ngāti Hāmua, ko Ngāti Rongo, ko Te Māhurehure ngā hapū.
Ko Te Maitaranui te tangata.
Ko Ruatoki te ahi kā.
Ko Tūhoe te iwi.
Tūhoe moumou kai, moumou taonga, moumou tangata ki te pō.

I've been here at Learning Media for just over a year working as an editor for Te Wāhanga Māori me Pasifika. My main focus is currently on all Māori early childhood educational resources such as the Pīpī Series, He Purapura and He Kohikohinga.  I enjoy working here as it has provided me with an outlet for my creativity, passion for reading, writing, and children.  

Ngā mihi.

Introducing new staff: Helen Scott

Senior Intellectual Property Advisor

I began work at Learning Media in April 2008. I have an LLB and a BA in English Literature and Philosophy, and have five years’ previous experience in copyright administration in educational institutions. I have spent many years in the publishing industry in mainly book commissioning and booklist management roles. I was a Council member for BPANZ (2000-2003) and a Director of Copyright Licensing Ltd, (2001-2002).